Gerald D'Cunha

I become very nostalgic and emotional when I attend the engagement and wedding ceremonies. My eyes well up, heart gets choked up… and, all this happens involuntarily as I stand there, in the crowd, and witness two young hearts exchange their engagement or wedding rings… Yesterday, Shelton, my wife’s nephew, got engaged to his sweetheart, Melita. They both flew down from the US to get engaged here in Mumbai. Fr. Donald, an uncle of Shelton, officiated the engagement ceremony. “My dear friend, a ring has a deep meaning,” Fr. Donald said, “It’s a circle… It has no beginning and no end… Love has no beginning and no end… God has no beginning and no end.” I had heard those words from Fr, Donald many times before, when he had blessed the engagement and wedding rings of many others in our family. Touch wood, all the marriages have withstood the rough weathers… Love has triumphed… The rings have protected the couples… yes, in their good times and bad times, i...

T he things that excited me decades ago, when I was much younger in age, do not excite me anymore. What I defined as ‘Success’, then, is no more the definition of that term… Fame looks very fickle and pale in the quiet serenity that I experience, now, in my inner understanding… Laughter and joy, which, sometime, somewhere, seemed buried beneath the weight of misplaced notions of social mirror, resurface when I drop that burden and nurse the child within me… As a child, I laughed effortlessly, I felt the joy… simply… just like that. Yes, just like that! And, now, why this strain? Why this seriousness? As the year 2018 comes to an end, I ask: Did I laugh more or cry more through the year? Did I see more hope or more despair? Like everyone else around me, I, too, have already begun to greet people - ‘A Happy New Year’… And, yes, though it sounds more like an old habit – rather an old custom – I, think, it’s a good-old habit, a good-old custom… I wan...

“Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretches her fingers to touch the heavens.” -        Lao Tzu I don’t’ think, it’s possible for any of us to achieve anything in life without ambition. Now, some of us may not like to admit that… But, I seriously feel, that it’s our ambition that propels us to achieve whatever we desire to, decide to… Some four decades ago, as a young man, here in Mumbai, I, too, wanted to know how people ‘succeeded’… how they achieved whatever they desired to. I wanted to know if there was a systematic method, a way, to do that. That’s when I had found, on the footpaths of this city, an old copy of Napoleon Hill’s famous book, ‘Think and Grow Rich’. Incidentally, the author, too, said, that his own search had started with the same question – “How people achieved great success?” Challenged by the great steel-tycoon of the time, Andrew Carnegie,  young Napoleon Hill h...

“Obsessed is a word the lazy use to describe the dedicated.” -           Anonymous -              I n last three days, at least six parents of my students have met me or called me just to express their one major concern about their young ones… “Sir, they have clue about what they want to do in life.” They ask: “What can be done about it?” Wish I had an answer to that question – “What can be done about it?” My experience has been this: Each one of us has to figure out, sooner or later, what one wants to pursue in life. Parents, with all their good intentions, education, information and money, yes, they can only guide, inform, enlighten, inspire and support… But, they cannot plant dreams in their young one’s hearts… They cannot set their young ones’) hearts on fire. In other words, parents cannot make their young ones obsessed with their dr...

A wedding in the family is a wedding in the family. A lot of pressure, you see… I mean the social pressure… I hear some of you react, “What social pressure? It’s a wedding in ‘our’ family, it’s ‘our’ money, ‘our’ likes and dislikes… So, why should we care about what other people think of us?” Chalo… Blessed are those who really can go about handling the wedding in their family without caring for what other people think of them. They, in my opinion, are the strongest, wisest and the most peaceful people in the world… The rest of us, including myself, are just mortals… We battle with that ghost -   ‘Log kya kahenge?” S ome twenty five (or so) years ago, when a young boy and girl from a middle-class of a Mumbai family married, the honeymoon destinations used to be Mahabaleshwar, Matheran, Kandala or Lonavala. For the richer lot, it was Kashmir, Simla, Kulu-Manali, Ooti, Kodai Kanal, Mysore-Bangalore, Mount Abu etc. ‘Destination weddings’ was an a...

I t was a busy narrow-street. On both sides of the street, there was hardly any space left for people to walk. Everyone was maneuvering his way through the chaos, and so was I. Just then, a friend of mine, who happened to pass by on his motor bike, sighted me… He spontaneously parked his bike on the side and crossed over to my side to talk to me. Even before I could remind him to park the bike little away, where there was some open space, the motorist behind him yelled, “Akkal nahin hai kya?” I instinctively knew it would provoke my friend… Yes, it did. “Tameez se baat karo,” my friend pointed his index finger. “Gaadi hatao ,” the motorist screamed… “Nahin hataunga,” my friend challenged. By then, the motorists from all sides were honking incessantly… I pressed my friend’s hand and gently whispered, “Let’s take your bike a little ahead and talk… It’s better for all of us.” Luckily, my friend did not show any resistance… He crossed ove...

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” - Helen Keller L et me clarify my position right at the start, here: I am not writing this Post as a supporter of Congress Party or its President, Mr. Rahul Gandhi. As I have told many times before, I keep party politics and hardcore religion at bay. Particularly, if my writing is going to poison the minds around me… If it is going to divide and polarize. I have been observing Mr. Rahul Gandhi’s political growth just as any of you would – reading about him, watching videos of his speeches and interviews, listening to people debate about him And, what had shocked me, always, was how systematically and relentlessly he was made to look like a joker, an idiot… a ‘Pappu’… and so on. What is even more shocking was this: most of my friends around me would think and believe so… would ...